The present invention relates generally to electronic commerce, and, more particularly, to an automatic sales assistant for electronic commerce customers.
With the recent rapid growth in electronic commerce (“e-commerce”) there is an abundance of tools for enterprises engaged in providing e-commerce services, for example, the retail sale of goods or services over the Internet. At the same there is paucity of tools for users of e-commerce services. As a result customers must necessarily adapt to the style of each service provider when doing business therewith. Conducting electronic transactions can easily and quickly become relatively cumbersome, especially for people relatively unfamiliar with computers. The difficulty is compounded when taking into account payment and delivery processes, which introduce their own set of issues and other entities that must be dealt with. Since each company involved with e-commerce typically has its own online user interface, its own procedures and its own requirements, it is oftentimes difficult for the customer to manually initiate, process and follow an e-commerce transaction successfully to completion and resolve any problems if and when they arise. This is true especially when it is the first time that a customer is dealing electronically with a particular service provider.